“…intervenes to create difficulties”

There is a perverse constant in Northern Ireland politics that just when things are becoming simple, some individual or group intervenes to create difficulties — even if it means acting entirely out of character. Just when the awkward squads on both sides had seemed to be mastering the art of negotiation and compromise, the former good guys of the Alliance Party decide that the time has come for them to make trouble. It is ironic that the party which owes its inception, and its ethos, to the need to build bridges between unionist and nationalist camps should now appear to have committed themselves to demolishing the frail bridge that is under construction between DUP and Sinn Fein on the devolution of powers relating to policing and the administration of justice… What Alliance and all the others were elected for was to make the system work, which is the current political imperative.